Correction

Time rewound slightly.

Just as Ji Ruo and the others were being chased by the Nine-Eyed Demon Spider swarm, Ji Ruo kept using [Absolute Sense of Direction] to search for the "safe" direction.

At the time, the Director of the Education Bureau was also searching in that direction.

Ji Ruo thought that after repeatedly correcting his [Absolute Sense of Direction], he could simply average the results and perfectly determine the path to survival.

But in fact, [Absolute Sense of Direction] currently had a correction rate of only 5%.

If all directions were divided into 360°, each correction Ji Ruo made only amounted to 18°.

Even after correcting repeatedly and taking the average, he could at most reduce the error to within 180°. Strictly speaking, Ji Ruo and the others were actually heading in the opposite direction from the true path to survival.

But Ji Ruo had no idea. And since they really had run into a Patrol Examiner, he felt that his choice of direction had been remarkably accurate.

By the time the Director of the Education Bureau found the Nine-Eyed Demon Spider Nest, quite a while had already passed.

He searched the Nine-Eyed Demon Spider Nest and quickly made a discovery.

Near the entrance lay the corpses of more than a dozen Nine-Eyed Demon Spiders. They had all been dismembered, their deaths gruesome.

But it was obvious that humans had killed them.

At a glance, the Director of the Education Bureau recognized that the Nine-Eyed Demon Spiders had all died beneath some kind of blade technique.

"The Spider Queen. The Six-Whiskered Catfish."

After leaving the nest, the Director of the Education Bureau frowned as he examined the two Demonic Beasts lying dead before him.

The Six-Whiskered Catfish had been poisoned to death, while the Spider Queen had been burned alive.

The Director also found five shallow, human-shaped depressions at the edge of the swamp not far away. Had he arrived a little later, even those faint impressions might have disappeared.

He closed his eyes and focused, sensing carefully. A moment later, the Director frowned.

"The trail's gone cold again..."

He furrowed his brow and thought for a moment. Powerful martial artists all possessed a kind of intuition, but it wasn't meant for finding people.

The Director pinched the torn piece of school uniform he had found along the way between his fingers, sensing it carefully as he pushed his martial artist's intuition to its limit.

To his surprise, a vague feeling really did stir in his heart!

The Director set off at a run, but if he was searching for Ji Ruo and the others, he was heading the wrong way.

"Damn toads! They killed the Earth-Turning Dragon themselves, so why are they chasing me?"

A filthy white cat crept cautiously through the woods, gritting its teeth in fury.

"That Earth-Turning Dragon was huge! They couldn't eat it all, so why couldn't they let me have a couple of bites? I barely ate anything! Damn it!"

It carefully picked out the scents in the air. As it walked, an earthy-yellow pearl above its head glimmered faintly.

With every step, it could cover ten meters, sometimes even more than that, and each time it went in a different direction.

Yet, strangely, no matter which way it moved, it always made steady progress forward.

It was as if the road ahead kept correcting itself beneath its paws.

"The scent of Demonic Beasts... This smells like Trolls? Just what I need."

The white cat's gaze turned cold.

"If I eat these Trolls, I should be able to buy myself a little more time..."

A moment later, it reached the Trolls' dwelling.

Trolls were humanoid Demonic Beasts. They were ugly, incredibly strong, and extremely stupid.

Demonic Beasts generally weren't very intelligent.

Incidentally, they also lived in groups.

The Trolls seemed to be celebrating. The white cat was just about to attack when it suddenly caught a strange trace of blood in the air.

It wasn't that the smell itself was strange. It simply seemed unfamiliar to the white cat.

It looked closely and finally spotted the "food," barely clinging to life, surrounded by the celebrating Trolls.

The white cat froze. "A human?"

It frowned, thinking. It hadn't had much contact with humans, but compared with the danger it currently faced, dealing with humans seemed much safer.

Though it had never dealt with humans, it had heard they possessed a way to travel through space and leave the Secret Realm.

The white cat already had the Moonlight Mirror, but it was badly injured and in terrible shape. It no longer had enough strength to activate it.

Cooperating with humans would be no different from asking a tiger for its skin. But it had no choice. It couldn't hold out much longer.

And the human was already on the brink of death. They said humans repaid kindness. Surely saving his life in exchange for a way out would be a good bargain?

It decided to take a gamble.

The white cat weighed the pros and cons over and over. Finally, it clenched its teeth and activated its innate ability, drawing all the celebrating Trolls into an illusion.

More than a hundred Trolls stood motionless in an instant.

"Pant, pant..."

The white cat gasped for breath.

Troll meat was sour and tough. It didn't want to eat it unless it had to.

After catching its breath, the white cat slowly walked into the Troll settlement.

The human was hanging from a long pole in the middle of the settlement. One leg and one arm were missing, and there was a gaping hole in his chest, through which his heart could be seen beating faintly. Part of his lung was missing, too.

The white cat frowned. The human was almost beyond saving.

If humans didn't have such a powerful martial artist's constitution, an injury like this would have killed him long ago.

"Human."

The white cat called softly. To achieve its goal, it even spent what little demonic power it had left to keep the male human alive.

The dying Patrol Examiner managed to open his eyes.

"You can speak... You're a demon."

"I want to make a deal with you," the white cat said slowly.

"We martial artists have nothing to say to demons like you," the Patrol Examiner said, his voice extremely weak. He could still speak only because the white cat's demonic power was keeping him alive.

The white cat frowned but didn't give up. "Hear me out first.

"Human, you're in terrible shape. My demonic power is the only thing keeping you alive. I can get you out of here. In exchange, I want you to take me with you when you leave Ten Thousand Beast Mountain."

The Patrol Examiner was stunned. His injuries had left him unable to think clearly.

"Where... do you want to go?"

"Anywhere but Ten Thousand Beast Mountain," the white cat said. "I know you humans have a way to leave the Secret Realm. I just want to get out of here."

"I... won't make a deal... with a demon. Don't... even think about it."

The white cat frowned again.

It slowly walked up to the Patrol Examiner and looked up at him. "I'm using my demonic power to keep you alive. If you get back in time, your humans should have ways to heal your injuries. Don't you want to live?"

"I'd rather... die... than make a deal... with a demon."

The white cat said, "I just want to leave Ten Thousand Beast Mountain. I'm not going to human territory!"

"Demons... can't be trusted."

"You!"

The white cat was a little angry. It had never told a lie in its life!

"So you're just going to die here? Let these ugly Trolls eat you?"

The Patrol Examiner tilted his head slightly. Through his blurred vision, he saw the more than a hundred Trolls frozen in strange poses. His heart gave a jolt.

This was a Great Demon!

"From the looks of you, you're young even by human standards. Isn't it a shame to die like this? You still have a bright future ahead of you. All you have to do is agree to take me with you, and I can save you!"

"I..."

"Think carefully. Is there anything important you still need to do?" the white cat urged. "Once you're dead, you won't be able to do anything!"

The white cat wanted to make a deal with this human because it didn't want to die.

The Patrol Examiner's mind wandered. His condition was so bad that he could barely stay conscious.

"Something important..." the martial artist murmured. At last, he remembered that there really was something important he had yet to do.

"I can... agree."

The white cat was overjoyed. "Really? I'll get you down right now! I can even help you get revenge while I'm at it!"

As it spoke, it gave a small stomp with one paw. The earthy-yellow pearl above its head surged with light, and in an instant, waves of soil rolled forth, burying every Troll!

"No... don't save me," the martial artist said with great effort. "Help me... get the news out... that something went wrong... during the Martial Exam. At the foot of Ten Thousand Beast Mountain, in the territory under human control, a geological change... the area is in chaos. I don't have to leave. Use my Secret Realm Watch... to send a message... Please... make sure... this news gets out."

His mind grew more and more muddled. Even with the white cat's demonic power keeping him alive, he could no longer hold on.

The Secret Realm Watch, in fact, had no function that could send him back on its own.

But the martial artist couldn't remember that anymore.

The white cat froze. "The foot of the mountain? I haven't manipulated the Earth Vein there! How could..."

It thought carefully. The Earth Dragon Pearl, which could control the flow of Ten Thousand Beast Mountain's Earth Veins, was in its possession. In theory, it should be the only one capable of manipulating the mountain's Earth Veins right now.

But it really hadn't touched the Earth Vein near the foot of the mountain!

There were plenty of Monster Beasts and Demonic Beasts down there, but their ranks were too low and their bloodlines too impure to be of any use to it.

Besides, with its demonic power, if it went down to the foot of the mountain, its powerful aura would stand out like a beacon in the fog. It wasn't stupid enough to waste its dwindling power manipulating the Earth Vein there.

Ever since it began fleeing, it had been circling the mountainside, evading the Great Demons hunting it.

So how had something happened at the foot of the mountain?

The white cat couldn't figure it out. A humanlike look of confusion appeared on its face.

This was its first time using the Earth Dragon Pearl, and it didn't know whether it had anything to do with the anomaly at the foot of the mountain.

The martial artist seemed not to have heard what the white cat said.

"There's... no time. Every second... means who knows how many children... will die. My life... doesn't matter..."

The white cat stared blankly at the human martial artist, its expression extraordinarily complicated.

"I can help you."

"Th-thank you... I'll teach you... how to use... the watch..."

The white cat leaned closer and listened as the martial artist struggled to explain how to use the watch. But he was at death's door, and the instructions he gave weren't actually correct.

Then the martial artist died.

"I promise you. I'll make sure the news gets out."

The white cat used what little demonic power it had left to lift the martial artist's corpse and lay him flat on the ground.

"So there really are creatures that aren't afraid of death... Humans are strange."

Muttering to itself, it felt a little admiration for him. It sat down in front of the martial artist, preparing to activate the watch.

But just then—

"Damn demon! What have you done to that child?!"